Open innovation in libraries

Abstract

“Open innovation” means the participation of an institution’s stakeholders (customers, suppliers, competitors, etc.) in its innovation processes. With the advent of the knowledge society, the role of libraries is deeply changing towards digital libraries, special services, and the provision of spaces. However, how should libraries realize such knowledge and innovation projects? Concerning libraries, open innovation integrates the views of users (as customers), software houses or design companies (as suppliers) as well as other libraries (as competitors) into the development strategy of a library. Innovation processes include information inflows and information outflows. In this paper, a theoretical model of open innovation in the context of the library institution is presented. We describe results of a survey and introduce paradigmatic case studies of libraries, which deployed open innovation and networked governance. These libraries show examples of innovation processes on a scale from small to large.